What I Know About Teaching

About a year ago, a friend of mine was preparing to teach a class that he'd never taught before... He's done a lot of one on one education and training, but I he had never taught a group class, and he was looking for some advice. 

I thought I'd offer him what advice I could, and so I wrote (most of) what became this piece down. I thought I had posted it to the blog at the time, but when I searched for it to reference it earlier today, I couldn't find it. 

I decide to post it now, revising it with the new bits and pieces I was writing today. 

Remember, this is about teaching a class, not giving a lecture or a presentation, or a demonstration or conducting a forum... those are all different environments, with different priorities and different techniques.

Here's what I know about teaching, from my own personal experiences, in more than 15 years as a professional educator and trainer (and they are two different but related disciplines), and as a training and courseware developer.

The Big Picture Stuff

Style and Philosophy

I have almost entirely moved away from traditional lecture classes (unless the courseware vendor or certification authorities require specific curricula and delivery).

I find that my students learn better, and that I teach better, in an interactive and participatory environment. An extended and guided conversation, with open digressions and contextual questions, answers, and explanations.

I believe in instructor lead, but participant driven, training and education.

As such, I tend to use a modified Socratic method to lead my classes into participation. I use a lot of leading questions, and logic and reasoning problems. I try to get my students to extend and generalize from examples and principles we've covered before, and then apply them to new situations.

I also encourage students to (civilly and constructively) argue and debate, both myself and each other.

When I think it'll be responded to well, I'll often deliberately misstate or poorly state or frame an idea, or deliberately misapply a principle or not fully extend a thought etc... in order to prompt my students into exploring the correct or complete thought. If they don't speak up on their own or catch me in it, I'll straight out ask them as I go "So, am I using this properly? Is there a better way? What if I did this... Was that earlier example wrong?"

Importantly, I always encourage... in fact, right up front I tell my students that I require them... to speak up if they think I'm wrong, or they have a different idea or different perspective, or a different experience.

HOWEVER... that doesn't work for all courses, or all students.

Different materials and subject matters lend themselves to different styles of instruction and presentation; and most critically, different students learn better with different styles and methods.

You MUST tailor your material, and your style, to your students, and the environment and requirements of that specific class.  

The Classroom Environment

Obviously, I work in non-traditional educational environments. I am not generally (though I have) teaching classes full of 10th graders.

My students are generally adults, who have at the very least, taken a lot of time out of their life to attend my class. Often, they have paid (or their employers have paid) several thousand dollars to attend. They tend to have an entirely different level of motivation and a different set of incentives, than other instruction environments.

Also, I tend to have my students for a minimum of two straight hours (for short talks given at conferences, demos at group events etc...), and frequently for 6-8 hours a day (sometimes even 10 or more hours per day), for two to five days (for professional education and training).

In this kind of environment, we get to go as broad and deep on the subject matter, as our time, and the amount of material we have to cover, allow; and what we cover is largely dictated by the desires and needs of the students.

In general, I like to start a bit later... I find that anything I teach before about 9:30am doesn't actually stick... so I keep the first part of each morning light, or I make it review and freeform Q&A from the day before... or introductions and personal stories on the first day.

We get up and move around at least once an hour, for enough time to go to the bathroom, and get a drink, have a snack... then, refreshed, we get back down to the material with renewed focus.

The same for lunch, particularly if I can get it catered in. We get up, move around, eat, talk to each other, get to know each other and share experiences... and we relax, and try to enjoy our time.

It's critical for both you, AND your students, to take time to relax, and decompress, and get comfortable, throughout the day. Stay hydrated, keep your blood sugar right, and your electrolytes right. Avoid getting stiff, and avoid strain headaches. You will be more efficient and more effective, covering more material with greater comprehension and retention, if you are relaxed and comfortable.

Then, at the end of the day, I don't like to try to teach the material up to the bell. I always like to give at LEAST the last half hour as a freeform Q&A and review of anything the students want.

So yes... it's a different environment than a typical secondary education classroom...

That said, I think that professional trainers and educators, have some valuable insights and experiences to offer in improving secondary and university education.

The Detail Stuff... Technique and Technicalities

Preparation

The most important thing, is to be prepared. You don't have to be a total expert on the material to teach a class in it, but you do have to know it, understand it, and prepare yourself with it (and with additional supporting material).

When I'm fully prepared for a class, I can be much more comfortable, extemporaneous, I can explain things better in a more engaging way, and I can change things up when it is necessary to, or when the class feels like that's where it's going etc...

Preparation allows me to be flexible, to be interesting, to be funny, to be personal, to be engaging; and lack of it, prevents these things... or makes them much harder...

...Or worst of all, makes them all there is, and no-one learns anything; except how good you are at vamping, or how well you can monologue at them off the printed materials.

Know not just the material you're teaching, but the history of it, the reasons and motivations behind it... how it got to be the way it is now. Understand the context of it, and how it will impact your students.

Even if all of this is not part of the class, people may ask questions about it, and again, knowing this stuff, and being prepared for it, will help you explain things better.

Personality

It's important to allow yourself to show through in the material. Be flexible. Use humor. Be personal. Change it up. Use personal examples and personal stories (when appropriate). If you don't have personal stories, use anecdotes from others, but make them real, personal, relatable...

It doesn't have to be directly personal, what it has to be is RELATABLE.

Be open... but don't make it about you, make it about the material USING yourself as the example, or as a pivot point around which your students can see and experience the material.

Repetition

You need to repeat yourself.

Anything important you say, you need to say it at least three times; and if it's REALLY important, it's preferable to say something three times three...

That's three times at once, then three times again a little later, then three more times again near the end.

You can, and often should, say it in different ways, so long as it's absolutely clear that you're really saying the same thing. You don't have to say it three times over and over again in a row, but the repetitions should be close enough together to be clearly reinforcing.

Some folks don't need or want repetition, and almost everyone is bored or irritated by it eventually, which we certainly want to avoid.

However, so long as the repetition isn't excessive (more than four or five times -or more than four or five cycles of three repetitions- in a single lesson, unless each repetition is reinforced organically as a subpart of the lesson), even if the repetition bugs them a bit, they'll RETAIN it better.

... so long as you maintain...

Engagement

Engage everyone, both as a group, but also individually. When you engage individually, so long as you do so in a way that everyone can see and hear, and isn't too specific to the individual, the audience can relate, and it's almost as good as engaging each of them individually.

Stop regularly and ask for questions; and make it clear when it's possible, that they can ask questions any time. If there's a point where you feel like you know there are questions, but no-one is coming forth, ask the question yourself, or ask leading questions of your students.

Engage your students with problems, exercises... bring them up to the whiteboard or chalkboard... Capture their attention fully, AND capture their intellect fully, AND engage their EMOTIONS... get them analyzing, and relating what you are doing, to themselves, their own knowledge and needs.

Use game design theory, and psychology, to your advantage.  A while back I wrote a piece on game design theory and engagement in sports, that I think has parallels and value to education as well.

Although it may not be immediately obvious exactly how this applies to education and training, I think you'll see the value, and I'm going to insert an extended quotation (feel free to skip ahead if you like):

"...Acquisition and retention are particularly critical to these games; and retention is achieved through engagement. 

The way game designers accomplish these missions are with spectacle, and reward psychology (positive and negative reinforcement through anticipation, reward and penalty; with a very strong bias towards reward, leavened by the occasional penalty), particularly competitive reward psychology. 

Something spectacular engages you for the duration of the spectacle. You are a passive participant. It attracts you, and fascinates you, but only for that moment. Retention requires maintaining engagement over time... becoming an active participant, either directly or as a metaparticipant. 

So... what does that have to do with sports? Or with spectator sports fans in particular?
Simple... Sports fans are players in a metagame. 

Spectator sport fandom, although passively received (the fan isn't an active participant in the games they are watching); isn't a passive, receptive, entertainment experience (like a movie or television). 

However, much as television shows retain viewers by emotional engagement in the story (thus making them metaparticipants in the narrative); spectator sports retain fans by persistent emotional engagement with the sport, and particularly with their team (making them metaplayers in the game). 

Sports fandom, is a kind of play by proxy; much as horse racing, and other betting games (roulette for example) where the players interaction with the game is not part of the gameplay. This makes it a metagame. 

And metagames have the same success vectors as any other game. 

One of the things that makes Boston sports fandom so... passionate and crazy I guess is the best way to put it... is that a Boston fan is being fed with a near perfect reward psychology cycle. 

Boston teams win often enough (and often quite excitingly) to attract attention and generate spectacle. This  acquires new fans (or brings back those whose engagement has weakened); and it presses the "happy button" in existing fans, engaging their reward pleasure mechanism. 

Importantly though, Boston teams don't win so often that fans get victory fatigue, and need reward escalation to maintain engagement. 

When they're NOT winning, Boston teams are rarely just mediocre... they tend to alternate between "oh God so close..." and "total abject failure" (at least psychologically if not objectively). It may seem counterintuitive, but this is actually far more engaging than consistent high performance or even consistent victory. 

In terms of gaming theory, this 3 point cycle (victory, near victory, failure) helps create spectacle to attract and acquire participants; and helps create, reinforce, and increase engagement. 

Very importantly, it also helps maintain engagement (and thus retention) by reducing victory fatigue, anticipation fatigue, and expectation escalation. 

So... getting into that second and third part... 

Retention is achieved through continued engagement. When engagement is weakened or broken, you lose participants (gamers, fans). 

Engagement is created, reinforced, and increased; with spectacle, novelty, fascination, and competitive reward psychology as described above. 

Engagement is weakened or broken and you lose participants (gamers, fans) through frustration, demoralization, boredom, and fatigue. 

So, the challenge is to maintain or increase engagement over time.

In general, you deal with boredom and fatigue, through novelty. Change things up, so that a participants experience, expectations, and emotional engagement with the game are maintained, and thus they are retained. 

I mentioned victory fatigue above, but didn't define it, I should probably define the three elements of "game fatigue" now. 

Victory fatigue is what happens when a player receives too many rewards, or wins too much too easily. This tends to cause boredom, and frustration; because the rewards no longer feel like rewards. This weakens or breaks engagement. 

In an interactive game you can deal with victory fatigue (and to a lesser extent anticipation fatigue) by varying gameplay (introducing new and different ways of earning rewards) increasing challenge (NOT just increasing difficulty, though that is one way of doing so), increasing penalty for failure (though you can't do that too much or you break engagement through frustration and demoralization), varying rewards (making the rewards new, interesting, and different), or by increasing intensity or spectacle (making the rewards bigger or more desirable). These mechanisms keep the players anticipation and pre-reward engagement high, and their reward pleasure mechanisms responding strongly to the rewards. 

In most spectator sports however, you don't have those mechanisms available to you (or they are severely limited). The difficulty and rewards do escalate somewhat over the course of a season, but are basically fixed year to year (win a game, win a conference, win a division, win a playoff game, win a championship game). So, frequent and consistent victories, particularly championships, result in expectation escalation. 

The three major exceptions to this issue of fixed challenge and fixed rewards by the way, are motor racing, premiership style football (soccer), and NCAA football and basketball. Not surprisingly, the first two are the two most popular spectator sports in the world; and the third creates a degree of unreasoning passion far greater than any other sports in America. 

Anticipation fatigue is a more interesting issue. When you get that "so close" feeling too much, it actually tends to discourage and disappoint you, which increases frustration and breaks engagement i.e. "they get our hopes up every time then disappoint us every time... what's the point". 

Expectation escalation, is what happens when performance or rewards consistently exceed expectations (or consistently exceed the mean performance of a peer group).This causes people to "reset" their emotional expectation of what poor, acceptable, and excellent are, such that their median level of performance, even if it is objectively far better than average, is simply "expected". 

So, a team that wins 80% of the time, year after year, will eventually be expected to do so. If that team starts to win consistently less than 80%, even if they are still better than most teams and win 60% of the time; the emotional reaction of their fans will be the same as if they had objectively poor performance, rather than simply "less good". 

Lesser success can feel like failure, when you're used to greater success. 

Cycling between "not quite great", and "really bad" (even if "really bad" is actually mediocre statistically, the victories and near victories redefine emotional expectations such that mediocre FEELS like abject failure), actually creates and reinforces engagement, and passion; far more, and far more intensely, than consistently high performance. 

This by the way, is the exact same reinforcement cycle that creates and reinforces addiction. Reward (the high), anticipation (the process up to the high), and penalty (the come down and the jones). 

So... for Boston fans, it's like vegas slot machine designers were controlling things for optimum fan acquisition, engagement, and retention. 

It's an almost perfect metagame... arising without design... which is kinda neat.

I realize that was an extended, and somewhat esoteric digression, but I think it provides real value, and direct parallels with education and training. If nothing else, let me pull out a small subsection and slightly modify it:

• Retention is achieved through continued engagement. When engagement is weakened or broken, you lose participants (or at least you lose their interest and attention)
  
• Engagement is created, reinforced, and increased; with direct participation or metaparticipation, spectacle, novelty, fascination, and competitive reward psychology
  
• Engagement is weakened or broken and you lose participants, through frustration, demoralization, boredom, and fatigue
  

It should be clear how those directly relate to engaging students attention and helping them learn.

Mirroring

After you've explained something important, ask particular participants to explain the point you've made, in their own words. If they don't get it quite right, lead them through figuring it out and explaining it properly.

Then ask THEM questions.

Then do it again with a different person, and ask them to explain it in a different way, or to come up with an example, or a scenario etc...

This is called mirroring. It's a communications exercise, that helps people understand what other people are saying, and how what they say is being perceived and understood by other people.

When you apply this to instruction, it serves those purposes, but it's also about making your students think through the problem or example or principle, and figure out how to relate to it, and relate it to others; rather than simply to repeat and regurgitate what they've been told.

It helps the student to truly understand and contextualize what they've learned, and to really show that they have done so.

It also helps you as an instructor, to be a better communicator, and to better understand how others communicate.

Comprehension and Retention

Finally... there is a basic instructional concept called the comprehension and retention cycle

• See

• Hear

• Read

• Show

• Do

• Repeat

To most effectively teach something, with the highest level of retention, your students should in some way:

• See the material (with handouts, whiteboard/blackboard, slides etc...)
• Hear the material explained (and remember the repetition above)
• Read the material, both silently and aloud (or aloud to themselves in their own head, which is different from silently... it sounds silly, but there really is a difference. Try it)
• Show them the material directly, in demonstration, preferably 3 different ways
• Do what it is they have read, heard, and been shown, applying it and solving it or using it themselves; preferably in 3 different ways
• Repeat it all again, preferably three times (or three times three for critical things); varying each time to explore the subject more fully, to maintain and increase engagement, and to allow the students different perspectives and examples to relate better to the material.

So... that's what I know about teaching and training... hope it helps.

Oh and one more thing...

Teaching is one of the greatest satisfactions, joys, and pleasures in my life. It helps me fulfill who and what I am... what I want and need to be.

I have learned far more from teaching, than I ever did from being taught... and perhaps separate from that... perhaps not... I have gained more insight and wisdom, about myself, and about the world, in so doing.

Take that as you will...

YES... THIS... WE WANT THIS... LOTS AND LOTS OF THIS...

Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere.

First thing... THIS is how you do a kickstarter.

This is the kind of thing that kickstarter can be great at, and do great things with; being done by people who understand their medium and their audience, and who design their campaign properly around it.

If this doesn't become one of the most overfunded kickstarters in history, I would be amazed.

I've been watching it for about 2 hours, and it's gone from $100k to over $500k in that time.

... And this is something I'm backing... even as little as I can afford right now. It's a good idea, and it's something I'd like to see done. I can't do much, but I pledged... It's the price of a cup of coffee or a little more than a gallon of gas. You should too if you can.

Anything we can do to increase the net level of education, intelligence, and reading in this country... on this planet... we should be doing. If it's a smart, well designed, well implemented way of doing so, even better.

Long term, I'd like to see what their fee schedule and sustainability model is, are they organizing long term as for profit, not for profit etc... but let's get this off the ground at the very least.

Now... for my more skeptical, and more conservative friends and readers... yes, liberals, education blah blah blah.

THIS IS A GOOD THING - IGNORE THE POLITICS

This is an essentially libertarian thing, using the power of private enterprise and initiative, and the power of market preference, to fund education.

WE WANT MORE OF THIS. LOTS MORE OF THIS.

There is one specific issue that I personally have a problem with... but I can get over it, because I understand the issue, and why it's presented as it is.

So for my fellow skeptics, and numbers geeks...

Ignore the claim that 25% of children don't learn to read in this country...

That is not an outright lie... it's also not the absolute truth. It's a matter of how we define literacy, and to what degree we count someone literate based on that definition.

That's a concept that takes more than 30 seconds, and more than one paragraph to explain... so it gets simplified here as "1 in 4 children don't learn to read".

It a political number, not a real number. A classic example of using definitions to make things scarier, to emphasize the problem.

Don't let that stop you from the core message here, or from supporting what looks to be an excellent idea.

Oh and, be sure to watch the video to the very end... priceless...

Tulips and Tuition

Why college costs will soon plunge

"Aid to higher ed already has exploded: In 1964, federal student aid was only $264 million, or $1.7 billion in current dollars. Today, the feds shell out $105 billion a year just in student loans. Total federal aid has soared from $64 billion (in 2000) to $169 billion (in 2010). 

Flooded with such largess, colleges have sent prices skyward (tuition is up more than 500 percent over the past three decades) and indulged in luxuries that would have made Marie Antoinette blush, from gourmet dining halls (sushi at Bowdoin, vegan at JMU) to rock-climbing walls. 

Last month, Virginia Commonwealth University announced the construction of two new dorms that will add 426 beds. Their $41 million cost comes to more than $96,000 per bed. Thank goodness Virginia is, comparatively, fiscally conservative: Princeton recently built a dormitory at a jaw-dropping cost of almost $300,000 per bed. 

Trend lines like these cannot go on — and they won’t. But not because of politicians’ efforts to rein in college costs. College costs will drop because of market forces politicians will be powerless to stop." 

Yes... true... but I think there's really a simpler way of putting it.

College tuition will soon collapse, because eventually people realize that tulips aren't worth very much.

I really did love Aaron Clareys book "Worthless" . I've ended up giving it to several students and parents I know. If you are one of those things, spend $5, to help save $100,000... you won't regret it.

I have a double degree in Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science, from a prestigious private engineering school... and I've never used either degree, except in pursuit my own personal interests (hobbies basically). Worse from a pure economics standpoint; excepting those organizations that require a college degree to consider a candidate, neither have particularly helped in my career.

My college costs were somewhat less expensive 20 years ago (in constant dollar terms, about 20% less), and the Air Force was helping me to pay, but I still had to have side jobs to pay for it... (though I graduated without debt, by choice).

My alma mater is a top 20 school in all its major disciplines by any major ranking, and in the top ten for several disciplines. It was recently ranked as one of the "500 best college values" near the bottom of the top 100. Boiled down... it's a very good school and for very good schools it's only moderately expensive.

To replicate my college education today would cost $184,000... and that's just in tuition, never mind books (books in engineering school can run several thousand a year), food, housing, transportation etc...

The majority of AFROTC scholarships have a tuition cap of $18,000 per year, and the student has to pay the difference. That's not even half the current tuition at my alma mater; which by the way graduates a higher percentage of AF officers than any school other than the Air Force Academy, and more in absolute numbers than any school other than the Academy and Texas A&M.

Much as I loved my school, and as great as the education I got was... not even CLOSE to worth it.

In fact... I don't think ANY college education, except that which is absolutely required for the technical elements in your chosen field (particularly STEM fields of course), is "worth it" from a career or economic standpoint, based on current pricing.

College is great for growth as a person... expanding ones horizons, developing habits and skills of learning and research, finding ones self and ones interests... But $185k is a hell of a lot to pay for that.

... and that's only a MID priced school these days.

Mid priced private schools are running in the $40-$50k a year range for tuition, fees, and board. Top priced schools are in the $60k a year range.

In-state tuition and fees (not including books, room, and board) average $13,000 a year for state schools. Out of state tuition and fees (again, not including books, room, and board) at state schools averages $32,000 a year.

The most expensive of the public universities, charge nearly the same for out of state tuition, as top tier private schools. Michigan charges as much as $40,000 a year tuition only. That's more than some Ivy league schools (the Ivies also may offer generous endowment grants to reduce tuition further)

All that debt, when in the job market... a degree isn't the advantage it once was.

As a hiring manager, my experience is that it doesn't matter how good a school you came out of, if you have no experience in the real world, and a BS or MS... you're worse than useless, you're actively harmful.

I have to spend two years to get you to unlearn the idiotic crap they taught you in college, and another two years getting you to actually be a useful employee.

This is true for everyone but the extremely capable, self motivated, and self educating... and for them, it doesn't matter whether they have a degree from a prestigious university, or a community college, or they are entirely self taught.

I'd rather have someone self taught, with 4 or 6 years of useful experience, with a quick and twisty mind, and a habit of learning; than ANY college graduate.

The degree... it's really nothing more than a piece of paper certifying that you're probably not a felon or a drug addict; and that you can show up, and follow basic instructions, for four-ish years.

Accountability, responsibility, risk, metrics, unions, markets... What about education?

Right now, Chicago teachers are striking, even though they already make an average salary nearly double that of the average Chicago family, and are being offered a 16% raise over four years.

I dunno about you, but as a free market partcipant in our economy today, that sounds like a pretty good deal.

Well, first thing is they're asking for a 30% raise over four years... but that's really just a negotiating point, and one they don't expect to get. If it were just about the raise, I'd guess they'd take the 16%.

It's not.

It's not really about the money; it's that the teachers new contract attempts, in even the tiniest way, to add some accountability and performance measures to the teachers contracts.

... and the teachers unions can't give even a millimeter on this issue. Not one millimeter, not ever. Because if they do, their rigid seniority system collapses, and they lose power.

Here's a fun fact; a lot of younger teachers don't mind the idea of performance standards, and they actually LIKE the idea of merit pay, performance bonueses etc... It's not a foreign idea for them, because all their friends who live in the real world market economy have that sort of thing.

Recently, in Idaho, the commissioner of education managed to get teacher tenure eliminated, and performance based bonuses (note, not performance based salaries or hiring or firing, just bonuses) passed as commission regulations, and then when they were challenged in lawsuits, via statute approved by public referendum.

In response, the teachers unions sponsored an unsuccessful attempt to have the commissioner (who is now serving as one of the two lead advisors on education to the Romney campaign) recalled. So unsuccessful in fact the numbers indicate basically no-one voted for the recall but teachers and their immediate families.

This year, they managed to get enough signatures together to get a repeal effort on the merit pay rules on the ballot as a referendum; polling on which indicates it will fail miserably. Meanwhile, the teachers unions are both suing to prevent the policies from being implemented AND SIMULTANEOUSLY suing to force the department of education to distribute the bonus money, but on a seniority basis.

Trying to have their cake and eat it too.

I don't understand how much more clear it could be that this has nothing to do with the wellbeing of our children, or about good teachers; it's about protecting union rules, and union rule...

BUT, there are certainly good, well meaning people, who really do believe that we shouldn't put performance standards on teachers... That it's somehow "unfair" or impossible, or just not a good idea etc...

"You can't hold teachers accountable for the performance of their students, there's too much they can't control. Their home lives, their parents, poverty... Good teachers could be penalized simply for having bad students). It's not fair"

Common refrain from teachers, and from those who support their position in this... After all you wouldn't want to be evaluated on someone elses efforts and abilities right?

Well... I am. Most likely you are too.

In the free market, we are held accountable for other people performance and decisions etc... all the time.

As an individual contributor, my performance is measured not only by my own efforts, abilities, and success; but that of my group, my manager, and my company as a whole.

As a manager, I am held entirely accountable for someone elses performance. I have tools to motivate them, help them perform better etc... But still, I have to deal with the performance that other people give me. I have to have the skill to use that performance in the best possible way.

"But you can fire your low performing employees".

Really?

Ever worked in corporate America? Or had a real job of any kind?

So long as my employees meet bare minimum standards, and don't actually commit a crime (or violate major HR policies), I'm not getting rid of my low performers. It's up to me, to make them meet the standards I need for my group to be successful.

In sales, you are held accountable for other people actions, decisions, and performance as well. You don't get to control your customers decisions, and how much they buy from you is dependent more on their performance than yours.

Yes, a skilled salesperson with a good support team will sell more than an unskilled one; and that's as it should be... but its still entirely dependent on someone elses performance and decisions. A good sales guy can't get a customer who doesn't have the money for the product, to buy the product... or at least not more than once.

Good sales managers understand this. They set account and territory sales expectations based on a reasonable evaluation of the possible performance of those accounts. If they don't then they won't get any decent sales people to work for them, and they'll constantly churn sales people making these accounts and territories perform even worse.

What matters in evaluating your ability as a salesperson isn't your absolute sales, it's your performance in comparison to other sales people with a similar situation. IF you perform well, then good managers will put you on difficult accounts that have the potential to perform better, and reward you if you make them perform up to potential.

At least if you have a decent management team.

At that point you're at the mercy of having a good boss, who understands that relative performance is a better judge of your capability than absolute performance...

Just like teachers.

Holding teachers accountable, doesn't mean that all teachers should be held to arbitrary and universal standards. Teachers that teach all "remedial" students can't be held to the same standard of performance as those who teach all honors students...

And NO-ONE IS SUGGESTING ANYTHING LIKE THAT.

Or at least no-one serious, with credibility, who should be listened to.

Calling for "standardized testing and accountability" isn't calling for teachers to make poor students perform at the level of honors students. It's calling for teachers of all levels of students to perform no worse than average against other teachers of similar levels of students; and to measure improvement in those students over time, compared to other teachers of the same level of students.

How is that unreasonable?

Only those with the irrational... even stupid... belief that teaching is some kind of special "calling" performed only by special people who must be protected from the market forces that the rest of us must cope with; could possibly justify that sort of thinking, with any kind of intellectual honesty.

They generally apply the same sort of thinking to artists, who must be protected from the horrible taste of the masses etc...

Yeah... If we did that, then teachers would be at the mercy of having competent managers, who knew how to evaluate performance.

Just like the rest of us.

In fact... The only time I ever see a serious proposal that teachers should be evaluated by absolute and arbitrary standards... It's coming from lefties or teachers; because they are trying to "avoid bias" or "avoid subjectivity" etc... etc... etc...

Holding teachers accountable also means holding administrators and school systems accountable. It means making them participate in the market that the rest of us are forced to.

If you have a poorly managed school, good teachers won't go there.

IF good teachers won't go there, then good students won't go there... IF they're given the option that is...

Oh... wait a second... Hey... that might just be...

And of course, if we allowed that, then the unions would lose...

Oh... hey, that might just be...

Ya think maybe...

Teaching is a job, just like any other. It's a job that has more benefits than most. These days, it's even a job that pays more than most. It's a job that has a lot more security than most. It's a job that has more garbage and BS and heartbreak than most. It's a job that's harder than most. It's a job that's a lot more important than most...

Great teachers can do more to help children be successful than anything other than great parents...

But it's still a job.

Teachers aren't superheroes, they aren't artists, they are workers... just like the rest of us.

Teachers don't need to be protected from the real world, they need to be a part of it, and accountable to it... just like the rest of us.

Maybe if they were, there would be a lot more good teachers, and a lot less bad ones.

Maybe if they our were, our children would be a lot better off.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Sorry, this is just too amusing:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — As Idaho voters decide on a sweeping education overhaul this November, teachers opposing the reforms may find themselves in a bind at the ballot box: By rejecting the changes, they could also be turning down a performance bonus after years of reduced or stagnant salaries.  

Idaho introduced merit pay under the reforms approved in 2011 and teachers worked toward those financial incentives last year. But the bonuses won't be paid out until Nov. 15, nine days after the referendum, and state officials say they can't distribute the money if the laws are repealed.  

The timeline is prompting outcry from the state's teachers union, which is fighting to overturn the reforms authored by Idaho schools superintendent Tom Luna.  

"The state Department (of Education) is holding this money hostage," said Idaho Education Association President Penni Cyr. "The teachers earned it, the legislature appropriated it last year and they intended it to be used for teacher compensation."  

Luna's office counters that the bonus payout plan follows the law and the only barrier to handing out the money would be the referendum spearheaded by the union.  

"It's not fair for them to say we're holding them hostage, they're the ones that put the referendum on the ballot, which is the only reason why these bonuses couldn't be paid," said Luna spokeswoman Melissa McGrath said. "We did not ask for there to be a referendum."  

If the laws are voted down, McGrath said, the state won't have the legal authority to distribute the funding.

So let's recap for those outside of Idaho. Tom Luna, Superintendent of Education for Idaho, drafted a plan for education reform in Idaho, which passed the legislature. Among the reforms were loss of tenure for new teachers, merit pay for all teachers, and bonuses for teachers who elect to lead extracurricular activities or go to needy school districts. Oh, and restricted bargaining rights for the unions.

First, they tried to get Luna recalled, with a ballot initiaitive. They got enough signatures to get it on the ballot, but it failed miserably... Basically the only people who voted for it were teachers and their immediate families.

Then they attempted to get the law repealed, which last year failed for lack of signatures (and included a huge scandal where teachers were encouraging 18-year-old students to get involved in the effort). However, partial repeals are referendums on this years ballot. Evidently they had enough time to get the signatures. One of those repeals regards restricted bargaining rights (yeah, like that's gonna pass) and the other regards merit pay.

Yeah, this is going to get interesting... As it is, the number of parents opposed to the reforms wasn't exactly high to begin with. Plus with all of the new educational choices that popped up, including free public virtual high schools, it's not like the kids have exactly been suffering.

In other news, Tom Luna is being floated as a possible pick for Romney's Education Secretary. He's already a member of Romney's Education Policy Advisory Group.

He's evidently also sharp as a tack, that one.

I can hear the handwringing already...

Mel

Edited to add: Evidently there's also a third referendum on the ballot that would repeal the requirement for all high school students to take at least 2 online classes (with state-issued laptops and computers no less) in order to graduate. Seriously, what is the union smoking and could it be more blatant in its attempt to save itself?

Learned Helplessness and Operant Conditioning

This deserves its own post.

I'm going to state something very harsh and controversial here.

My entire generation, Generation Y, is fucked up.

Every generation before us fucked us up, and we fucked ourselves up.

I can state this with complete certainty for one simple reason: I know exactly how it happened.

A little background though, because it's necessary.

I am the very bleeding edge of Gen Y. My husband is a Gen Xer and not much older than I am. All 3 of my brothers are Gen X, they are 7, 8, and 10 years older than I am. My brothers and I stayed in the same school system for our educations and the same school district. I attended the same high school as two of my brothers.

We grew up in Mesa, AZ while Mesa grew so rapidly it became the fastest-growing city in the US. The elementary school my brothers attended (and I attended for exactly one year) was less than 10 years old when they attended. I never attended a school that was older than 10, ever. I went to 3 different elementary schools without ever moving because every time a new school was built the boundary line would change. I attended 2 elementaries in brand new buildings on brand new grounds.

Mesa grew so fast that the school district had no choice but to hire teachers straight out of the teaching colleges. Some more experienced teachers were around, sure, but they needed to fill the teaching slots somehow.

My youngest brother Tim is 7 years older than I am. He attended high school between 1989 and 1992. I attended the same high school from 1996 to 1999.

We only ever had one teacher in common, Dr. Bernstein. Dr. Bernstein retired from the school system my sophomore year out of disgust. The only other favorite teacher I had retired the next year for the same reason.

The walls in my childhood home were covered with plaques and trophies and certificates that my brothers had earned. By the time I got there, even doing the same activities (we were all band kids), nobody did plaques or trophies anymore. Hell, nobody did competitions anymore. Conservatives often talk about the "participation trophy" culture like it's new. There was an in-between stage where no one got anything or any recognition whatsoever.

But I digress. Point is, in the space of 7 years everything changed. My mother, til the day she died, just could not understand how it happened that she kept me in the same district and the same high school as my brothers and they got a much better education.

It's simple. The teachers, the administration, and the culture of the school system.

Due to the circumstances of the district I grew up in, and my age, I'm the leading edge of the generation where personal accomplishments were politically incorrect and competition was banned. These ideas filtered in with the new teachers; for this reason rapidly growing districts and the inner cities (where only young teachers without seniority could be found to work) were the first to undergo the transformation.

Wouldn't want to make the not-as-smart kids feel bad about themselves, would you? And you're so smart, you have a high IQ so we'll make it clear you "owe" it to society to use it in a way that benefits society. Oh, and we'll ban any kind of competition that makes it clear that hard work and perseverance will make a difference.

Educational Precept #1: what you have is what you're born with which is all you can possibly have. You can not make yourself smarter, or make yourself learn better, or improve your mental faculties in any way. If you attempt to do so, we will make it clear you're hurting someone else.

Then we'll put you in classrooms for 7 hours a day, surrounded by peers "at your level" (i.e. dumb kids with dumb kids, normals with normals, honors with honors). Then since you're not allowed to have personal accomplishments outside of grades (which are highly variable) we'll take away the carrot of winning or possibly winning or even recognition and replace it with a stick. The stick of what will happen if you don't follow the rules, or make the teacher happy.

Educational Precept #2: the goal is to turn out productive, obedient laborers for the system who listen when they're told what their position is and how they're to serve society. We do this by diminishing the individual and replacing their personal aims and goals and replacing them with the society's goals. If you step out of line, we'll make it clear how selfish you are.

Oh wait, there's another phrase that encapsulates these two precepts very well:
From each according to their abilities...


Now we just need to convince them that everyone deserves according to their needs... but they hadn't gotten that far with my cohort. I've heard they've made great strides towards that end since then.

So where does learned helplessness come in?

In the learned helplessness experiment an animal is repeatedly hurt by an adverse stimulus which it cannot escape.
Eventually the animal will stop trying to avoid the pain and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation.
Finally, when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness prevents any action. The only coping mechanism the animal uses is to be stoical and put up with the discomfort, not expending energy getting worked up about the adverse stimulus.

So take a bunch of children. Tell them they MUST be in a place or else bad things happen and they MUST show up every day. Tell them they MUST obey the teacher or else bad things happen. Then teach them that they are powerless over their own intelligence and own abilities and the only rewards they can possibly get are from being a good little cog in the system.

Then put them in the real world and be utterly shocked that they don't take control over their own lives.

Gen Y, Generation "Why Bother", Boomerang Generation, Peter Pan Generation (because we won't grow up)... think those might have anything to do with the operant conditioning we were forced through as kids? When you're told that you have no control over yourself or your situation and that the big teacher in the sky doles out what is fair and what you deserve... why in the hell would you try at all?

The entitlement mentality that so many decry? What did you expect when every one of us was taught that if we just followed the rules good things would happen? That someone out there would take care of our needs if we just did what we were told?

That Obama would pay our mortgage? After all, if they behave they'll be taken care of.

They're following the rules. Where's the good stuff they were promised? They made a deal with the educational system and that's how life is supposed to work.

The deal doesn't exist, but no one taught them it doesn't exist.

No one taught them how much power they have over themselves. In fact, 2 decades of their lives were spent telling them how little power they have as individuals and that only as a group can they make a change.

Occupy Wall Street anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

But I did say that it's not only the fault of the generations that made the school system and left us there to be conditioned and experimented on.

It's also our generation's fault for BELIEVING the BULLSHIT we were fed.

Impressionable? Yes, all kids are impressionable. Yes, we're hard-wired to believe our elders.

That doesn't mean we can't fix ourselves, that we can't learn better and teach ourselves better. We all have that ability as long as we live.

All we need is to see that we do have control over our beliefs and we can change how we interact with the world. We already know this in small ways.

If you've ever tut-tutted over a young man obsessed with video games take a second and look at their scores. They're not obsessed with the games. They're obsessed with being able to see the direct consequences of the time and attention they've put into the game. They're obsessed with the feeling of accomplishment, of getting better and doing better.

This is the cure what ails Gen Y. Directs actions = direct, measurable consequences. But that's incredibly difficult to do without conscious though.

What would be awesome though, and incredibly helpful, is if everyone who's so busy bitching about entitled children would take one person and give them a chance to do what they never could as a child.

Take one young person and teach them that their efforts + their work = their accomplishment and their victory.

Take one young person hurting for money, hand them a lawn-mower or a hammer, and get some useful work out of them. Pay them directly. Find something to praise about the work, and find something that can be improved. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

We met a young man and his girlfriend this weekend purely by chance. Our trailer was stored next to their trailer home (our neighbor owns the storage and trailer park). Both his parents are out of work but this young man is DESPERATE for something to do that holds meaning and gives him a sense of self. His girlfriend is just as bad off as she's currently living with him and his parents (separate rooms though, she's proud to say). They kept trying to help us with moving our trailer.

They're coming over this weekend to help me with the yard. They need to work and feel as if they've done something useful.

There's so many kids (and I say kids, even though I'm 31, because most haven't had a chance to grow up) that are so desperate for meaning and sense of accomplishment and personal power.

Give them a chance. Impart what you know to be true, that each person has control over their situation. Let them make their own real, visual proof, then reward them.

Let them own the fruits of their labor and feel that power. Re-condition them with reality. That's the best, and only, way to break the hold of learned helplessness


Mel

It really does get better... VERY NSFW

And now it's time for another post in which I irritate my socially conservative readers...

Watch all the way to the end please, and listen... unless rather serious vulgarity and profanity offend you in which case don't watch the video, or just skip to the end spoken word bit:



I'm not gay, and I wasn't bullied in high school even though I am the worlds biggest geek... But it wasn't out of the inherent kindness of teenagers. I wasn't bullied, because I was the biggest and strongest, and sometimes the meanest kid out there. I was the one who taught bullies a lesson... and believe me, I taught a LOT of lessons.

I'm not big on the "anti-bullying" bandwagon currently gathering steam in America. AS it is, it seems to be a politically correct hysterical reaction, combined with an unhealthy dose of overprotective parents, liability obsessed administrators, and fame seeking psychobabblers.

But, I still think forcing someone to pay a price for non-conformity, is wrong.

I don't care whether you disapprove of homosexuality or not; this isn't really about being gay, it's about being different. About not conforming to the social conventions and constructs enforced by the institutions we laughingly call educational in this country.

I wont say there isn't some value to those social conventions and constructs; society operates smoother with them, and when they are generally followed. A society without a commonly agreed upon set of social conventions is a society that quickly collapses in on itself.

The problem becomes when those who choose not to follow those conventions, in essentially harmless ways, are FORCED into doing so; or are actively persecuted, or actively hurt, physically, financially, spiritually, and emotionally, for not doing so.

That, is the very definition of coercive restraint of human liberty; and it is flatly wrong.

You don't have to support someones choices; but you have no right to enforce your choices upon them.

As people who love liberty, we would not tolerate such behavior from the state; but what is the state but a collection of individuals acting in concert... We should not accept this behavior from individuals, any more than we would from the government.

The message of this video is, if you choose another way, and you are being hurt because of it, it get's better. And unfortunately, until we can destroy those so called educational institutions and rebuild them into something that supports liberty and freedom and individual rights, giving kids that message is the best we can do.

Remember folks, in our fine institutions, it's those who love liberty who are the minority. The ones who don't fit in. We are the threat to the social order.

I don't see how anyone who says they're for freedom, liberty, and individual rights can not support this; because supporting freedom, liberty, and individual rights, means doing so for everyone, even if their choices are completely abhorrent to you (so long as their choice is not infringing on your rights).

It's not about gay or straight, it's about free or not.

The Power Law Distribution Applies in Ways You Might Not Expect

Sonic Charmer, and Steve Sailer have been commenting on some sociological aspects of "prestige" education
9in the context of the new documentary "Waiting for Superman"), here, here, and here.

You should read all three; but I want to make a comment on a different aspect of this issue.

There IS an economic calculus to "elite" education, elite performance... to making the sacrifices and setting the priorities necessary to make it into that top 10%.

Unfortunately, most people don't understand this... and many of those that do, make the calculation improperly; because they have the wrong base assumptions.

Simply put, people presume there is some kind of linear relationship, or at least some kind of smooth curve, of input (time, effort, sacrifice) to output (reward, opportunity).

This presumption is entirely incorrect. There is a curve, but nowhere near as gentle a slope as people intuitively expect.

Both reward, and opportunity, tend to exhibit the power law distribution pattern.

You might know the power law distribution as the "80-20 rule" or the "90-10" rule; where 90 percent of the output, comes from 10 percent of the input (or 90% of the reward goes to 10% of the players).

There is a genuine benefit to being in the top 10% of “prestigious” schools; both in the peer group you form, and in the perception of future employers. Significantly better opportunities will be open to you in future.

Otherwise, nope nothing.

Oh, you get the benefit of a college degree; but at that point, all college degrees NOT from a top 10% university are effectively the same, or at most marginally different.

Doesn’t matter if you go to a $200,000 private college that isn’t a top 10%, or you go to Fresno state, or you get an extension campus degree at night; your future opportunities will be approximately equal (unless the specific academic program you attend it well known enough to be considered a prestige program within the field. I went to Embry Riddle for example, which in the aerospace industry is one of the top schools, but outside of it, is basically unknown).

Similarly, there is a genuine benefit to being in the top 10% of performers in any organization (maybe even the top 20% even in some organizations); whether it be work, or school, or the military.

You will receive better rewards and better opportunities will be open to you…

...otherwise, nope, nothing.

Being number number 10 of 100 is substantially more rewarding than being number 11. Being number 11, is only slightly more rewarding than being number 49.

Almost all endeavors in life with a competitive element end up being the same. 10% or 20% of the players get 80% or 90% of the rewards.

Summer Homeschooling Rant

Today we discovered that Daughter the Older has lost some of her math skills, or is pretending that she can't remember. Given that I distinctly remember her 1st grade teacher, a strict nun, instructing me to help her rehearse her times tables and sign off on them, and then testing DTO on said tables, I think it's the latter.

She's been sentenced to a summer of remedial education via Mommy so she learns that 1. she's supposed to remember this stuff, and 2. never to pretend that she doesn't know EVER AGAIN.

Thus I'm wading through textbooks, curriculum, software...

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I've found teaching resources come in distinct flavors.

1. OMG expensive homeschooling curriculum of the "tough" variety.
2. Fluffy bunny entertaining "education" to make parents feel better about their kids spending all their time coloring.
3. Fluffy bunny "educational" software sold according to its interactive qualities and last updated for Windows Me.
4. "Conservative" (God I wish) curricula made for Bible thumpers specifically.
5. Used school textbooks.

Gee, which one am I going to pick? Option number 5 please.

This is where it gets fun.

How does a person pick a textbook anyway? There's thousands available, especially once all the editions are considered.

Some kind of rating system would be nice, right?

So I look up textbook ratings, and I get this site.

Looks good, right?

That is until you get to the reading textbooks ratings, and see their criteria for the 1993 ratings.

Texas approved five basal reader series for local use beginning in 1993. All contain occultic, supernatural stories, for example, shamanism (witch doctor techniques) and irrational manipulation of nature. One series describes com­muni­cation with the dead. None uses genuine phonics.

They rank here in descending order from best to worst, based upon the proportion of occult to wholesome stories.

That's it, I'm going to bed before I smash my poor netbook to pieces.

Mel

It all comes down to parents...

HT: Hell in a Handbasket

Statistical Fallacy

Yaknow, maybe it's just me being anal, but there's a common joke/insight/sardonic musing out there that kinda bugs me:

"Remember folks, half of everyone you meet every day is below average".

It gets a quick laugh, and hits that little schadenfreude center in our brains; but it bugs me, because it shows how little most folks know about statistics.

Technically speaking, half the "people you meet every day" are below the median not the average; which is more properly titled the "mean".

Given a gaussian distribution, about 68% of values are within one standard deviation of the mean, about 95% of the values are within two standard deviations, and about 99.7% lie within three standard deviations.

That means, that about 32% of all people are within a statistically insignificant difference from "average" (1/2 a standard deviation or less).

The difference from 1/2 to 1 standard deviation from the mean is generally considered to have a mathematically relevant impact; but in empirical terms generally means very little. It is generally only variations of 1 standard deviation or more which have a significant practical impact.

Thus, only about only about 16% are "below average", to a significant degree (and conversely only 16% are above average to a significant degree).

However, I'd guess that you have to be at least one standard deviation above the median to have understood all that.

Ok, that's just me being a wanker.

Irritating Paperwork, Pissed-Off Parents, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

I just spent the last half hour filling out school registration forms for the kids for next year.

The application fee is due tomorrow.

It's February.

Last year I was able to put off this particularly annoying bit of responsibility until April. Hell, last year open house for potential new families wasn't until March.

That was before this particular bit of nasty business at St Thomas, a neighboring Catholic school:

Nun fired as principal of St. Thomas Michael Clancy The Arizona Republic Jan. 22, 2008 11:18 AM A Catholic school principal was fired just days after she was told she could remain in her job the rest of the year. Sister Patricia Gehling was principal at St. Thomas the Apostle School in central Phoenix for 7½ years. On Jan. 14, just after school resumed after the Christmas holiday, Gehling was informed her contract would not be renewed. Word spread, and on Thursday a group of parents gathered to pray for her retention. After school on Friday, she was told not to return.

These parents did more than pray. Given no information other than "not due to misconduct" many of the parents did what they could to "rectify" the situation and reverse the priest's decision. According to all accounts the principal was quite loved by the families at the school and parents did not understand what was going on or why she was let go. Many contacted the Diocese (which did nothing since the decision was in accordance with church policy), some contacted the priests of the neighboring parishes (same thing), and a few went as far as leaving letters on our windshields during the morning masses, asking for all of us to call the Diocese and plead on their behalf.

As a fellow mom commented, that last attempt "wasn't very Catholic of them". Oh, and the last statement of, "please help us, this could happen to you!"... obviously they don't know our priests. Or our principal. Or our vice principal.

But anyway...

The Monday after the firing our school office was swamped with new families trying to get their kids into our school. The flood only increased after attempts at rectifying the situation failed.

So our April registration date has been moved to February so admissions can get a head start on processing all of the applications.

The school has a policy of putting returning students and their siblings first as far as admissions go, then depends on a mix of factors such as being part of the parish, grades, recommendations, family interviews... you get the idea.

It's a helluva lot of work just to consider one new student much less a sizable portion of another schools student body. I don't envy admissions at all at the moment. Not only do they have a huge pile of paperwork to wade through, but parents of kids in Catholic schools are not known for their patience in waiting for a decision especially if they've applied to many schools as a form of insurance.

Plus we have the best school in the area, Catholic or no, and everyone knows it (yes, I love the school that much).

So in order to not step on anyone's toes, all current families have been asked to submit their applications NOW in order to make sure places are reserved for those who wish to return BEFORE new applications are considered.

While I appreciate that the school is making sure that returning students and their siblings are considered first, I'm a little annoyed that it's FEBRUARY and I'm filling out the school application and submitting immunization records.

Oh well, could have been worse. This could have happened in October.

Oh, and I don't even want to think about the enrollment numbers at St. Thomas for next year. This has been a truly nasty business, done in accordance with canon law or no. I don't think St. Thomas will be the same for quite a while to come; and while I do not have the knowledge to even think about questioning the priest's decision I somehow don't think he expected quite this response. No priest wants to see his parish torn apart.

Chalk another one up to the law of unintended consequences.

And a great silence covered the land...

... punctuated only by the joyous weeping of parents in their suddenly quiet and mess free houses...

Yes folks, the first day of school is here.

Or at least it is for the schools of the Diocese of Phoenix, where our girls go to school (Amazingly enough, at a 4 million person metro area and 20% catholic population we don't qualify for an archdiocese; we're part of the archdiocese of Santa Fe, population 72 thousand. And yet, there are towns of 30,000 in Italy that have an archbishop, or even a cardinal... Funny that).

In particular, this is our older girls first day of "real" school, she's just starting kindergarten today; and our younger girls first day of any kind of school period, she's starting the two year pre-school program.

Through a quirk of dates and policies; Girl the youngers birthday is a few weeks too late to have let her start pre-school last year while her sister was in pre-kindergarten. She'll be 4 in less than a month; while Girl the older will be six 2/3 the way through her Kindergarten year.

I grew up most of a year younger than all the kids I went to school with because my birthday was a month before the end of the school year; Girl the older will be right in the middle, and Girl the younger will be most of a year older than her schoolmates.

Honestly though, that's not a bad thing. For one thing she's been soaking up noggin, her sisters schooling, and our own efforts at education very well. She's a lot further along with things than most three year olds (or four year olds for that matter); in fact she can even read a lot of basic words and she knows her letters and numbers very well. Plus, she's only recently become consistent enough with her potty training to be able to make it through the day without accidents; and that's kind of important.

Girls the older is herself raring to go to kindergarten, mostly because she gets to wear a UNIFORM YAY!!!! No seriously, I can't describe to you the enthusiasm she has for wearing the uniform. It's a mark of big girl pride.

What's really funny though, is that both girls are REALLY tall (as in 95th percentile tall) for their ages. They look more like a second grader and a kindergartner respectively; and compared to the rest of their class... Well, I hope it doesn't get them teased; but it IS kind of funny to look at all these little tiny 3 year olds, and then there's our girl who looks like she could take them all on in a steel cage match and emerge victorious.

With Girl the older, it's almost as bad; though she at least isn't the tallest in her class, there's actually one girl and one boy taller. Actually the taller boy is kinda freakishly tall; as in 9 year old tall not 5 year old tall.

Anyway, we're really happy the kids are finally both in school. Last year was a bit rough on Girl the younger without her playmate all day; and we're glad to be getting them both into the routine, the discipline, and the GOOD educational experience (rather than the unfortunately typically poor public school experience. Trust me on this one, we couldn't do a better job homeschooling than this school does unless we BOTH made it our full time job. They're one of the best primary schools in the state, and in the top 10% of the nation)

Mel's not quite sure what to do with herself though. She started a flexible hours part time job a couple weeks ago to give her something to do, but she's not really happy with it. She may look for a more traditional mothers hours job (the school has full day kindergarten and preschool, with before and afterschool care and enrichment programs); if for nothing else, just to get the social interaction from people who aren't either kindergarten/preschool parents, parish members, or our existing friends (most of whom were my friends before we met, because most of her old friends no longer live in the area).

What's the deal with ADD?

Someone asked on the gunthing.com forums, what's the deal with ADD? Is it all bullshit, or do all these kids really need medication?

Well, really, it's about 99% bullshit; and for the 1% of kids diagnosed that actually have it, the treatments often are worse than the problem.

Most often the diagnosis of ADD or ADHD or any of the related "persnality disorders" is part of the general war on boys (between 5 and 8 times as many boys are diagnosed with ADD as girls - depending on which numbers you believe).

The issue here is that many of the criteria for diagnoses are all parts of normal little boy behavior. Of course to todays "enlightened" politically correct, non-competitive, sensitive society, little boys behavior is unacceptable. It's not ok to be competitive or judgmental or aggressive or any of the other things that separate boys social behavior from girls social behaviot.

The teachers have been trying since the early seventies to turn little boys into little girls. When they found that no matter how much they socially indoctrinated the boys, they would still behave like boys; they turned to medication.

Most of the rest of the time, when this relentless pursuit of pharmacology isn't part of social engineering, it's as an aid to teachers who have poor control and discipline over students.

This one I don't blame on the teachers, I blame it on the parents and administrators. Children are today allowed what I would call obscenely poor standards of behavior, both in public and in private; because the parents from my generation on down, are either afraid to be parents, or have been taught ridiculously stupid things about parenting.

Of course administrators aren't going to allow teachers to use stricter discipline or harsher punishments than parents would allow.

... and of course, that's all part of the social engineering as well. Indoctrinate kids make for indoctrinated parents.

Finally, the diagnosis of "personality disorders" like ADD is almsot ALWAYS used to justify increases "special needs" funding for the schools. In some districts, every kid they get with ADD is worth as much as $5000 extra to the school; and medicated kids are well behaved kids who take less time and effort and money.

Except of course for those who don't need the medications (most of them), who end up zonked, and have their developing personalities messed up by psychoactive drugs. Or the kids who the medications backfire on, and turn them manic or generate other psychoses in them.

You cannot possibly understand the effect that psychoactive drugs have on childrens personalities; because they havent fully formed their personalities yet. You can never know if it's really your kid, or if it's the drugs.

The fact is, maybe 1 out of every 20 or 30 kids had "problems concentrating and acting out" before the ADD drugs were heavily prescribed; and most of those kids did reasonably well without drugs. Maybe 1 in 100 kids were a serious behavioral problem. Now, one out of 5 (yes, seriously, 1 out of 5) kids in affluent communities (the poor don't generally take ritalin) are on some kind of psychoactive medication before they leave high school.

This isn't to take away from those who WERE helped by the drugs, and really did need them (that 1 in 100 I mentioned). I had several friends growing up who were little monsters without their drugs, had no attention span, would act out violently etc... Thats the 1 in 20 or 30 that I talked about who can really use it.

All those other Kids though? ...Teachers and parents should be dealing with their children, not their pharmacists.

The inappropriateness of this overwhelms me

From the Cigar Intelligence Agency:

I was busy typing away a report on antisocial personality disorder as my final paper for Psychology class when my almost 7-year-old hands me a blue slip from school…

December 19th, 2006

1st grade

The district HIV/AIDS curriculum will be presented by the school nurse. Parents are welcome to attend. Please contact the Health Office if you choose to have your child not participate.

Someone please tell me that this is a joke.

That’s right folks, it says 1st grade! Now mind you, I don’t live in one of the best neighborhoods in Phoenix, but somehow I highly doubt that our 6 and 7-year-olds are sharing needles or having unprotected, gay sex. That’s right, I said gay sex. Advocates for the gay community may say that they’re not more likely to be transmitting HIV/AIDS, but cold, hard statistics say different. Sorry, folks, no PCness from this gal.

Don’t think that I don’t want my child to learn these things, but at 6?!? What exactly are they going to be indoctrinating our children’s innocent minds presenting them with? What’s going to happen when they get to the topic of transmission? Who in the H-ll thought it would be a good idea to discuss intravenous drug use, unprotected and anal sex with any 6-year-old? I half expected to see the slip say, “Featuring guest speaker Suzi Landolphi”. Why don’t they just take them on a field trip to the local sex shop as icing on the cake?

This is what happens when we allow fruitcake libtards to dabble in our educational system. I can only imagine the conversation that would take place after my little girl learns about needle-pushing, sodomy and casual sex. Needless to say, I will be calling the Health Office to opt her out of this completely irrational and ill-timed bullshit, liberal circus act “presentation”.

Yeah, that about sums it up for me too. Some please tell me how introducing an HIV presnetation at this age is in any way useful or appropriate?

Of course it won't really be about AIDS, how dangerous it is, how to avoid it now will it? Of course not. It will be about how AIDS can hit anyone, and that it's not about gays; except in America, about 55% of the time it is (actually it's probably more than 55%, because black men are about 60% of all new infections, and are reluctant to admit to homosexual behavior. About 30% if the time it's IV drug related, only about 15% of the time is it from straight sex), and being gay is OK, and it's not right to judge people.

Well yes, being gay IS OK, but as for the rest of it it's crap. As for the truth of it, and the morality of it, that's for Mel and I to teach, not the damn school nurse, and certainly not to six year olds. Is there any rational reason why a six year old should be taught anything at all about sexually transmitted diseases, excpet by parents who believe it's appropriate?

The only explanation for this, is that they want to start indoctrination early; so they'll resist less.

We’re in Scottsdale, and it’s crap like this that have us ignoring our “good” school district, and sending our kids to catholic school. It’s one of the best K-8 schools in the state, and a very reasonable price for parishoners, with no "alternative lifestyle" teaching.

The education of children in morals and principles is the job of the parents. Parents decide what is appropriate for their children, and what values their children are inculcated with. Educators should educate, not indoctrinate.

I actually got a 1540...

But the next year they published the scalar adjustments, and it is a 1600 on the scale they are using today. Also it was before they allowed calculators.

Your SAT Score of 1600 Means:

You Scored Higher Than Howard Stern You Scored Higher Than George W. Bush You Scored Higher Than Al Gore You Scored Higher Than David Duchovny You Scored Higher Than Natalie Portman You Scored Higher Than Bill Gates

Your IQ is most likely in the 150+ area

Equivalent ACT score: 36

Schools that Fit Your SAT Score: California Institute of Technology Stanford University Princeton University Yale University Harvard University

What Does Your SAT Score Mean?

UPDATE: Late in 2005 they changed the scale again, from a 2x 200-800 point scale, to a 3x 200-800 scale. That means that a perfect score is now a 2400.

However, I also took the SAT-II writing exam (which used to be called the Writing Achievement test), and I got a 740; which would have been adjusted to a 1780 when they changed the scoring scale.

That means my score today would be 2280.

Oh, and I got a 35 on my ACT.